From:    Ammond Shadowcraft
To:      All Members                              Msg #55, 04-Apr-88 10:44
Subject: Pagan Christs


 
                         The Sacrifical God man 
 
        How did the Christian mythos arise? Where did it come from? 
         
        The Christian myth is almost totally Pagan in origin. I used to 
    think that anything outside the Judeo/Christian/Moslem Belief System or 
    worldview was Pagan. Such is not the case. 
         
        The two main features of the CBS are the Eucharist and Sacrifice of 
    a God man. These two features were well known and well loved by Pagan 
    mystery cults centuries before the Christian Cults intergrated them 
    into the Gospels. 
         
        The Eucharist goes way back into history and is based upon the 
    ritual consumption of the God man. Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and many 
    others were ritually consumed. The practice dates back to prehistory 
    when a human sacrifice was identified with the God (perhaps a 
    Vegetative God) and was sacrificed and eaten. Over the ages human
    sacrifice was found detestable. Animals were then substituted and 
    sacrificed as the ritual identifier of the God which was then followed 
    by grain offerings, breads shaped into the form of the God, sometimes 
    in the shapes of natural items (sun, moon, etc.). 
         
        The mythos of the Jewish Christ integrated this practice into it's 
    mysteries. There is strong reason for this. For some 200 plus years 
    before the time recorded for Jesus the Greeks and their mystery cults 
    invaded and changed Israel for all time. A war was instituted to 
    diminish or wipeout the Hellenizing influence. Part of the Hellenizing 
    influence was an effort to update or change the Jewish religion to 
    something more applicable to the times. After the Maccabbes War the 
    Hellenizing cultist were driven underground; right to the heart of the 
    Jewish mystical culture. Hence the Greek influence upon the myth of 
    Jesus.

        The sacrifice of the God man (Jesus, Attis, Adonis, Osiris) was a
    well known and well loved feature also. In fact it was necessary to
    have a willing sacrifice before a Eucharist could be performed. When
    the sacrifice was not willing the legs and sometimes arms of the
    sacrifice were broken to make it look like the sacrifice was willing
    (not struggling against the sacrificers). Jesus was a willing
    sacrifice.

        Images of Attis (Tammuz/Dummuzi) were nailed or impaled upon a pine
    tree. The Jews knew this and wrote "Cursed is he who hangs upon a 
    tree." A goat was substituted for a boy in sacrifice to Dionysus at 
    Potniae and a hart for a virgin at Laodicea. King Athamas had been 
    called upon to sacrifice his first born son by the Delphic Oracle, 
    Melenloas sacrificed two children in Egypt when stayed by contrary 
    winds; three Persian boys were offered up at the battle of Salamis. It 
    was only in the time of Hadrian that the annual human sacrifice to Zeus 
    was abolished at Salamis in Cyprus. The God man Jesus was hung upon a 
    tree; he was also the lamb of God. As such the sacrifice and Eucharist of 
    the God man Jesus is purely Pagan in origin.  
                
        Part of the older Pagan sacrifices was in the King sacrificing his 
    only begotten son. Jesus was the only begotten son of the King of 
    Israel, sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. This practice 
    was overturned in the myth of Abraham and Issac when it was found 
    detestable and injurious to the tribe or kingdom. Yet the God man Jesus 
    was sacrificed in the flesh. This was done to appeal to the underground 
    Greek mystery cults who had much in common with the Jewish Christian 
    Cultist. 
 
        "During centuries of this evolution, the Jewish people tasted many 
    times the bitterness of despair and the profound doubt denounced by the 
    last of the prophets. In periods when many went openly over to
    Hellenism, it could not be but the the ancient rites of the Semitic 
    race were revived, as some are declared to have been in earlier times 
    of trouble. Among the rites of expiation and propititiation, none stood 
    traditionally higher than the sacrifice of the king, or the king's son. 
    The Jews saw such an act performed for them, as it were, when the 
    Romans under Anthony, at Herod's wish, scourged, crucified [lit. bound 
    to stake], and beheaded Antigonous, the last of the Asmonean priest 
    kings in 37 B.C." _Pagan_Christs_ page 44,45 by J. M. Robertson 
         
        The mode of sacrifice was predetermined by previous Pagan doctrine. 
    The type of sacrifice was also predetermined by Pagan doctrine. Both 
    the sacrifice of the king, and the king's son were incorporated into 
    the Gospel myth. The God man Jesus is both the King of the Jews and the 
    son of God, the king of Israel.  
         
        As stated before the sacrifice of the king or king's son was found 
    injurious to the state. Before animal and grain sacrifices, criminals 
    and prisoners of war were substituted. Yet the criminal had to be 
    identified with the king. This was done by putting royal robes on the 
    sacrifice and parading the sacrifice around, calling it the king. 

        "The number three was of mystic significance in many parts of the
    East. The Dravidians of India sacrificed three victims to the Sun-god. 
    In western as in eastern Asia, the number three would have its votaries 
    in respect of trinitartian concepts as well as the primary notions of 
    'the heavens, the earth, and the underworld.' Traditionally, the Syrian 
    rite called for a royal victim. The substitution of a criminal for the 
    king or kings son was repugnet, however, to the higher doctrine that 
    the victim be unblemished. To solve this problem one of the malefactors 
    was distinguished from the other criminals by a ritual of mock-crowning 
    and robing in the spirit of 'sympathetic magic'. By parading him as 
    king, and calling the others what indeed they were, it was possible to 
    attain the semblence of a truly august sacrifice." _Pagan_Christs_, by 
    J.M. Robertson page 45 
 
        There is nothing in this mythos that did not originate in other 
    cultures. 
         
        "We can only conclude that the death ritual of the Christian creed 
    was framed in a pagan environment and embodies some of the most 
    widespread ideas of Pagan religion. the two aspects in which the 
    historic Christ is typically presented to his worshipers, those of his 
    infancy and death, are typically Pagan." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M 
    Roberts, page 52.    

        What about the man Jesus then? Was he divine? Did he exist? Is/was 
    he the Savior? 
         
        Most, if not all, of the Christian Belief System is Pagan in 
    origin.  It is indeed hard to force oneself to believe that Jesus is 
    the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God when such titles were readily 
    copied from Pagan doctrine. Perhaps the only item not borrowed from 
    Pagan sources was the Messiah concept. That, of course, was taken from 
    the Jewish hysteria of the time. In the siege of Jerusalem in 72 C.E. 
    there were some 18 Messiahs inside Jerusalem alone. Neither the God man 
    Jesus nor the self proclaimed militant messiahs saved Jerusalem. Such
    was the measure of hysterical superstition upon the nation of Israel.

        "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not
    common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity. The title 
    Savior was given in Judaism to Yahweh; among the Greeks to Zeus, 
    Heilos, Artemis, Dionysus, Hercales, the Dioscurui, Ceybele and 
    Aesculapius. It is the essential conception of Osiris. So, too, Osiris 
    taketh away sin, is the judge of the dead and of the last judgment. 
    Dionysus, the Lord of the UnderWorld and primarily a god of feasting 
    ('the Son of Man commeth eating and drinking'), comes to be conceived 
    as the Soul of the World and the inspirer of chastity and self 
    purification. [J. M. Robertson may be referring to Attis here.] From the 
    Mysteries of Dionysus and Isis comes the proclamation of the easy 
    'yoke'. Christ not only works the Dionysiac miracle, but calls himself 
    the 'true vine.'" 
         
        "Like Christ, and like Adonis and Attis, Osiris and Dionysus also 
    suffer and die and rise again. To become one with them is the mystical 
    passion of their worshippers. They are all alike in that their 
    mysteries give immortality. From Mithraism Christ takes the symbolic 
    keys of heaven and hell and assumes the function of the virgin-born 
    Saoshyant, the destroyer of the Evil One. Like Mithra, Merodach, and 
    the Egyptian Khousu, he is the Mediator; like Khousu, Horus and 
    Merodach, he is one of a trinity, like Horus he is grouped with a 
    Divine Mother; like Khousu he is joined to the Logos; and like Merodach 
    he is associated with the Holy Spirit, one of whose symbols is fire."

        "In fundamentals, therefore, Christism is but paganism reshaped. It
    is only the economic and doctrinal evolution of the system--the first
    determined by Jewish practice and Roman environment, the second by Greek
    thought--that constitutes new phenomena in religious history." _Pagan_
    _Christs_ by J.M. Robertson pages 52,53

        No religion develops in a vacuum. All religions are influenced not
    only by it's predecessors but by the contemporaries of the time also.
    Such is the nature of Christism yesterday and today.

        Now about Jesus the man, did he exist? I think not. All the
    teaching of Jesus can be attributed to other sources and grafted over
    the Gospel myth. Nothing he said was substantially different in any way
    from previous sayings. Jesus was not a man but a contrived myth.

        "The Christian myth grew by absorbing details from pagan cults. The
    birth story is similar to many nativity myths in the pagan world. The 
    Christ had to have a Virgin for a mother. Like the image of the 
    child-god in the cult of Dionysus, he was pictured in swaddling clothes 
    in a basket manger. He was born in a stable like Horus--the stable 
    temple of the Virgin Goddess, Isis, Queen of Heaven. Again , like 
    Dionysus, he turned water into wine, like Aesculapius, he raised men 
    from the dead and gave sight to the blind; and like Attis and Adonis, 
    he is mourned and rejoiced over by women. His resurrection took place, 
    like that of Mithra, from a rock tomb." 
         
        The man Jesus did not exist. There are however sources that speak 
    of others seeing him. These were secondhand sources. No direct 
    observations were made. At one time or another we have all had a vision 
    of Deity in our minds. Such is the sight of Jesus, a mental image. 
         
        What of the Gospels then? They are passion plays designed to be 
    read or acted out in front of an audience. Passion plays were a common 
    feature of pagan religion. Looking at the Gospels themselves one finds 
    a chopply written, scene by scene, display of the life of the God man. 
    Only the important aspects of his life are described. The minor events 
    and influences of the life of Jesus are not recorded, which leaves one 
    to think that the Gospels are indeed a play. 

        "When we turn from the reputed teaching of Jesus to the story of 
    his career, the presumption is that it has a factual basis is so 
    slender as to be negligible. The Church found it so difficult to settle 
    the date of its alleged founder's birth that the Christian era was made 
    to begin some years before the year which chronologists latter inferred 
    on the strength of other documents. The nativity was placed at the 
    winter solstice, thus coinciding with the birthday of the Sun-god. And 
    the date for the crucifiction was made to vary from year to year to 
    conform to the astronomical principle which fixed the Jewish Passover. 
    [The Passover is moon based, an already familiar pagan method of 
    cyclic, monthly dating.] In between the birth and death of Jesus, there 
    is an almost total absence of information except about the brief period 
    of his ministry. Of his life between the ages of twelve and thirty we 
    know nothing. There are not even any myths. It is impossible to 
    establish with any accuracy the duration of the ministry from the 
    Gospels. According to the tradition it lasted one year, which suggests 
    that it was either based on the formula 'the acceptable year of the 
    Lord', or on the myth of the Sun-god." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M. 
    Robertson, page 68 

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